Merkel, Hollande urge unified EU response to refugee crisis

BERLIN: A new wave of migrants began entering the European Union from Serbia Monday as the leaders of France and Germany called for a unified response to the continent´s biggest migrant crisis since World War II.
The EU has been struggling to find a response to the unprecedented numbers arriving -- from the thousands landing on the shores of Greece and Italy to the hundreds risking their lives to climb onto trucks to travel from France to Britain.
The crisis also threatens to hijack a summit in Vienna of leaders from the western Balkans region.
"We must put in place a unified system for the right to asylum," French President Francois Hollande said in a brief statement ahead of talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, calling the influx from the world´s crisis zones "an exceptional situation that will last for some time".
"Rather than wait, we should organise and reinforce our policies, and that is what France and Germany are proposing," Hollande said.
More than 1,000 migrants and refugees arrived in EU member Hungary late on Monday, the first in a wave of about 7,000 people who found their gruelling journey to Europe blocked last week, when Macedonia declared a state of emergency and closed its Greek border for three days.
An AFP photographer witnessed them finally arrive in Hungary from Serbia via a cross-border railway track, close to the southern Hungarian village of Roszke.
Their crossing comes just days before the Hungarian government deadline of August 31 for the completion of a razor-wire barrier along the length of its southern border with Serbia -- which is not a member of the EU -- in a bid to keep migrants out.
Germany, which expects to take in 800,000 asylum seekers in 2015, saw anti-migrant sentiment rear its head over the weekend as violent protests erupted against a refugee home, provoking anger from Merkel."It is vile for far-right extremists and neo-Nazis to try to spread their hollow, hateful propaganda but it is just as shameful for citizens including families with children to join them" in the protests, said Merkel in her strongest statement to date against a wave of anti-refugee protests to hit eastern Germany.
EU border agency Frontex said last week that a record 107,000 migrants were at the bloc´s borders last month, with 20,800 arriving in Greece last week alone.